Research & Scholarship
My research examines how people learn financial concepts and plan to apply them, studying how dual-modality content delivered with interactive digital tools influences self-regulated learning, engagement, and interest development in informal financial education.
Dissertation Complete
Goal Framing & Visualizations' Influence on Self-Regulated Learning of Compound Interest: An Explanatory Mixed Methods Study
Using an explanatory mixed-methods design, I investigated how different goal-framing approaches with visualizations influence engagement, interest, self-regulated learning, and comprehension of compound interest, with an AI chatbot conducting follow-up qualitative interviews with participants.
Research Philosophy
My 15+ years of practitioner experience in financial education ground my research in authentic contexts and real-world challenges.
Practitioner-Researcher
Designing scalable financial education for diverse adult learners with limited time and attention has shaped my research questions from the start. That practitioner experience makes it clear how challenging it can be to get busy adults engaged in learning about their own finances, and why studying what actually works matters.
Explanatory Mixed Methods
Quantitative results drive qualitative interpretation in my work. Experimental designs establish what happens; AI-enabled chatbot interviews help explain why, capturing the self-regulated learning processes, interest development, and engagement experiences that numbers alone can't surface.
Interactive & Multimodal
I study educational content that pairs text with visual media: data visualizations, visual metaphors, interactive calculators, because dual-modality delivery has been shown to support engagement, interest, and comprehension in ways that text alone does not. Intentional design of those tools is central to my research.
Informal Learning Across the Lifespan
Adults need continuing financial education long after formal schooling ends, particularly as markets evolve faster than regulation can follow. The theoretical framework of self-regulated learning, engagement, and interest development, applies across domains wherever short, scalable interventions need to reach diverse learners on their own terms.
Future Directions
My post-dissertation research agenda extends this work in three directions.
Learning & Decision-Making in Personal Finance
Building on my dissertation to ask how goal framing, visual metaphor, visualizations, and interactive or game-based tools support understanding and action, and how those effects vary across learners, concepts, and time.
Human–AI Interaction & AI-Enabled Research
Refining and validating AI-facilitated qualitative methods, defining their limits, and studying how generative AI supports or undermines learning and judgment, including protocols for the ethical design of conversational agents.
Financial Communication & Information Design
Examining how information presentation, disclosure, and design choices shape understanding and behavior in financial contexts, and how those principles extend to health and sustainability communication.
Publications & Presentations
My full record of publications, conference presentations, and invited talks is on my CV.